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Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

nytimes.com

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Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#51

Post by sb057 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #25

It's not obvious what the acquiring group mentioned in this article would do with Yahoo after they've bought it, to make it worth the price. They'd have the 5th most visited domain name on the Internet, but as Yahoo has demonstrated, visits don't automatically turn into money. (Twitter has a similar problem, and sits at #8, but they have a social aspect that Yahoo doesn't.) Unless Alibaba comes with the purchase at a…

It's funny you mention Alibaba. I did a little digging, and it turns out that Softbank (who owns ~35% of Alibaba to Yahoo's ~24%) has a 35% stake in Yahoo Japan. Very interesting stuff.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#53

Post by ergothus »

EdHominem wrote: post #50
ergothus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer, it might make sense to say this. From a business perspective (he says having no business experience or expertise), Yahoo is a collection of assets: Code, people, branding, community. They aren't in first place, and they aren't profitable at the moment, but I think the case that they have zero or negative value is a bit simplistic. Put it another way: Would you rather throw a pile of money at trying to…

Yes, of course it has some teardown value. Billions in Ali Baba stock if nothing else. But that's not what you're suggesting - doubling down by doing more of what they've been doing. This assumes that what they're doing has some useful foundation you can find and build on. There are essentially zero Yahoo users, especially of any service that's remotely monetizable. People who use Yahoo are people whose ISP set it as…

slight variation: I was talking about Yahoo ABSENT the profitable sub-groups. The part that apparently has negative value.

I fail to believe that Yahoo, minus Ali Baba and Fantasy sports and similar bits, is actively NEGATIVE value. It might be poorly run and have the poor actions you're talking about. (okay, it DOES have the negatives you mention).

That doesn't mean what's there "should just die" - it's a business opportunity to take that and use it profitably.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#54

Post by Cozumel »

ergothus wrote: post #41
samstave wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But who cares about yahoo? (Serious question) yahoo should just die. Please tell me why it shouldn't

As a consumer, it might make sense to say this. From a business perspective (he says having no business experience or expertise), Yahoo is a collection of assets: Code, people, branding, community. They aren't in first place, and they aren't profitable at the moment, but I think the case that they have zero or negative value is a bit simplistic. Put it another way: Would you rather throw a pile of money at trying to…

Interesting insight, guess that explains why MySpace was bought as well.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#56

Post by kristianc »

Cozumel wrote: post #54
ergothus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer, it might make sense to say this. From a business perspective (he says having no business experience or expertise), Yahoo is a collection of assets: Code, people, branding, community. They aren't in first place, and they aren't profitable at the moment, but I think the case that they have zero or negative value is a bit simplistic. Put it another way: Would you rather throw a pile of money at trying to…

Interesting insight, guess that explains why MySpace was bought as well.

MySpace was bought for exactly that reason. It has a large enough number of returning monthly visitors (accessing archived photos and what not) for that data to be valuable to the adtech vendor that bought it. If you're looking to acquire lots and lots of customer data, there are far cheaper ways to go about it than trying to build your own social network from scratch.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#57

Post by Someone1234 »

encoderer wrote: post #12
Someone1234 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And he's quite right. Apple might be the exception because of their extensive cash reserves. But if you look at Facebook or Twitter, it is hard to tell why they're selling for that amount. I myself avoid index funds which over-invest in tech because I believe we're in a bubble.

How you could compare Facebook to Twitter is beyond me.

I didn't compare them, I grouped them together.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#58

Post by bzbarsky »

EdHominem wrote: post #50
ergothus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer, it might make sense to say this. From a business perspective (he says having no business experience or expertise), Yahoo is a collection of assets: Code, people, branding, community. They aren't in first place, and they aren't profitable at the moment, but I think the case that they have zero or negative value is a bit simplistic. Put it another way: Would you rather throw a pile of money at trying to…

Yes, of course it has some teardown value. Billions in Ali Baba stock if nothing else. But that's not what you're suggesting - doubling down by doing more of what they've been doing. This assumes that what they're doing has some useful foundation you can find and build on. There are essentially zero Yahoo users, especially of any service that's remotely monetizable. People who use Yahoo are people whose ISP set it as…

A fair number of people use Yahoo mail and Yahoo search. It's not a majority of the market by any means, but it's still tens to hundreds of millions of users all told.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#59

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

sb057 wrote: post #51
JoshTriplett wrote: post #25

It's not obvious what the acquiring group mentioned in this article would do with Yahoo after they've bought it, to make it worth the price. They'd have the 5th most visited domain name on the Internet, but as Yahoo has demonstrated, visits don't automatically turn into money. (Twitter has a similar problem, and sits at #8, but they have a social aspect that Yahoo doesn't.) Unless Alibaba comes with the purchase at a…

It's funny you mention Alibaba. I did a little digging, and it turns out that Softbank (who owns ~35% of Alibaba to Yahoo's ~24%) has a 35% stake in Yahoo Japan. Very interesting stuff.

Yahoo! Japan is a separate company from Yahoo, Inc. It was formed as a joint venture between Yahoo, Inc. and SoftBank, thus both of them holding a stake.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#60

Post by drzaiusapelord »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #25

It's not obvious what the acquiring group mentioned in this article would do with Yahoo after they've bought it, to make it worth the price. They'd have the 5th most visited domain name on the Internet, but as Yahoo has demonstrated, visits don't automatically turn into money. (Twitter has a similar problem, and sits at #8, but they have a social aspect that Yahoo doesn't.) Unless Alibaba comes with the purchase at a…

>perhaps redirecting that to some competing search engine might be worth it for a cheap enough price.

Yahoo doesn't have a search engine. Yahoo search is Bing. So that revenue stream has already been tapped and I'm sure is a multi-year contract.

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